Women In Bodywork Business

Main menu

Sub menu

We’re Off to See the Wizard

The Wizard of Oz, that is. AMTA announced a couple of weeks ago that Dr. Mehmet Oz, the undisputed king of daytime television, will be the keynote speaker for this year’s national convention, coming up in Denver in September.

Personally, I am not a fan of Dr. Oz. He touts all kinds of pseudoscience, to the point where he has admitted that his own father has asked him when he was going to quit messing around and get back to real medicine. He has been widely criticized by colleagues, who will say to the end that he is a brilliant surgeon and inventor, and wonder why he has seemingly gone off the deep end of effusively embracing, and recommending to his audience, all kinds of unproven and disputed treatments.

In just perusing his website a moment ago, I found the following juicy tidbits….first, if you’re constipated, then you need to get your root chakra unblocked. If you will just get a face reading, you’ll be much better informed about all your health problems. Communicating with the angels can help you heal. We also have Dr. Oz’s Homeopathic Starter Kit and amazing Crystal Sonic Therapy. When I typed in “psychics on show” in the search box on his website, 25 pages worth of links come up.

In all fairness to the Great and Mysterious Oz, he’s not a total flake; he has dispensed a lot of good information over the years as well; he credits the colonoscopy he got on his show with saving his life and caused a mad rush on colonoscopies. There’s no doubt he is well-educated and accomplished. He is a professor in the Department of Surgery at Columbia University. He is the Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He has authored over 400 research papers and numerous books and won numerous awards, including 5 Daytime Emmys. He has also won the Truly Terrible Television Award, given by the Independent Investigations Group, for “for extraordinary contributions to America’s scientific illiteracy and pervasive fear mongering,” and is the only person to win the Pigasus Award two times from the James Randi Educational Foundation for promoting “nonsense” and “quack medical practices.”

As a massage therapist who wants to see massage accepted as mainstream medical care, it concerns me that the AMTA views Oz as the right person to associate ourselves with. On the other hand, I totally see why they would. I feel that those of us who desire for massage therapy to be seen as a credible health profession are far outnumbered by those who don’t want that or care about it at all, or who think the medical community will embrace us in spite of our colleagues touting reiki with the angels and crystal chakra balancing. I daresay, some of those people probably reside on the Board of Directors of AMTA….READ MORE….